Doctors didn’t want to take Medicaid patients. Hospital ERs were too busy to follow up with patients, and they weren’t the right place to seek care for a chronic condition like high blood pressure, anyway. So Sunderhaus started walking the neighborhood, including Victory Village, knocking on doors. Sunderhaus became the crazy white-lady nurse in sneakers who chatted up pregnant teen girls, old men, women working multiple low-wage jobs. When her friends expressed alarm she was walking around a neighborhood that had a reputation for crime, she’d say, “If I want to be loved, I go out in the
...more